I share the real-life stories that inspired my books, as well as other travel adventures, and posts on the food, history, and culture of the Southwest United States.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Falcons, Hawks, and Wildlife Rescue

Last
week I shared the experience of going on a “hunt” with falconer Matt
Mitchell. Now here's insight into the life of someone who works with birds of
prey.

Matt has always loved animals. When he was a teenager living
in Albuquerque, a neighbor had a Swainson’s hawk. “I thought that was the
coolest thing,” Matt says. He did the necessary training and apprenticeship,
eventually working up to a master falconry license, and at the time of this
writing had 13 birds.

Matt also nurses birds that have been injured by hunters or
in accidents. He says, “Having birds, people started bringing me injured birds,
and of course you have to be covered by a permit, so I joined wildlife rescue.
Most hunters now tend to be more conscientious, but I still get injured birds
in every year.”

Matt considers education the most important part of wildlife
rescue. He talks to school children and other groups, letting people see the
beauty of falcons and hawks. This kind of education “gives wildlife value,
because it says somebody cares.”

Falconers play an active role in conservation, working with
environmental groups on projects such as protecting habitat. “The biggest
threat to falconry today is loss of habitat,” Matt says. “Falconers are very
aware of keeping places wild, keeping lots of birds and bird breeding habitat
protected. We’d like to see the sky full of birds.”

He sometimes gets birds passed along by well-meaning but
inexperienced people who have tried to raise a wild chick or injured bird. The
bird has almost always suffered from poor care. People must have a permit to
keep falcons, and getting one requires a two-year apprenticeship and inspection
of facilities. Matt’s facilities include two stucco buildings, each with
separate 8x8 rooms for individual birds, plus a large, net-covered flight pen.

Chicks at 3 weeks and 2 days

“Falconry is an addiction in a way,” Matt says. “In the
summertime, when the hunting seasons are closed and the birds are molting, it
was just a natural thing to keep working with the birds and breed them. I think
it’s good for their state of health, to pair up. I started breeding birds in
1989.”

In late spring, he may have two or three newborn chicks in
his house at any time, carefully tending them to strengthen their immune
system. The day-old chicks are floppy balls of fluff greeting the world with
tiny squeaks and squawks. After a few days, they’ll go back to a mother bird.
When they’re old enough, they’re moved to the flight pen. At that point, “They
are basically wild birds,” Matt says. “They’ll tolerate you, but they are in no
way tame.”

One day when I visit, he has a hybrid falcon chick—part
peregrine and part gyrfalcon, bred through artificial insemination—he’s raising
for a client in Florida. In the United States, hybrids must be raised as human
imprints, meaning a human raises the bird by hand rather than giving it back to
a mother bird. This helps ensure the imprints won’t escape into the wild and
mix with native species. At three weeks old, the bird is a fat, wobbly ball of
white fluff whose screeches sometimes trail off into a goose-like honk.

On my next visit, three weeks later, the bird is sleek and
graceful, with only a few stray tufts of down to show he’s not fully grown. As
the falcon poses on Matt’s arm, he beats his wings, practicing for the day –
very soon – when he’ll soar.

“I like imprints,” Matt says. “You’re like a team. Now some
falconers hate imprints, because they’re real quick to show their moods. If
they’re angry at you, they don’t hold anything back. If they’re hungry, they’ll
scream. They don’t have this aloof nobility of a wild-trapped bird. But I love
to see these behaviors, and have them do courtship or aggression or whatever.
It’s what birds do to each other, and it gives me a window on that. In the
wild, you’re lucky if you can watch feeding from across a canyon with binoculars,
but I can go into the chamber with a piece of meat and we can feed the babies
together.”

Stop back next week for part three of this series. This was excerpted from an article first published in the enchantment magazineby
NMRECA, July 2012.

What
We Found is a mystery with romantic elements about a young woman
who finds a murder victim in the woods. It features falconry as a subplot.

Kris Bock writes novels of suspense and romance involving
outdoor adventures and Southwestern landscapes. In Counterfeits,stolen
Rembrandt paintings bring danger to a small New Mexico town. Whispers in
the Darkfeatures archaeology and intrigue among ancient
Southwest ruins.The Mad
Monk’s Treasure follows the hunt for a long-lost treasure in the
New Mexico desert. In The Dead
Man’s Treasure, estranged relatives compete to reach a buried treasure
by following a series of complex clues. Read excerpts at www.krisbock.com or visit her Amazon page.